Posted on 07/11/2016 7:04:45 AM PDT by Salvation
For some twenty-four of my twenty-seven years as a priest I have lived in and ministered to largely African-American parishes and communities. It has been a great blessing to me spiritually, liturgically, and personally.
As you may imagine, I get a lot of questions from people when racially charged events appear in the news. I’m asked what my parishioners think as well as what I think.
This past week began with the death of two African-American men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, in interactions with the police. Their deaths are certainly tragic and appear prima facie to be unnecessary, even possibly criminal. And while the investigations into the circumstances must continue, the videos are nevertheless horrible to watch. Add to this a long string of recently publicized deaths under similar conditions and the result is a widespread, deeply held belief among African-Americans that the weapons of law enforcement are too quickly drawn, guilt is too easily presumed, and deadly solutions are too frequently the recourse when the dispatcher notes that the subject is a black male.
The week ended with the tragic shooting death of five police officers and injury of several others. These officers had no connection with the questionable deaths earlier in the week other than the blue uniforms they wore. Whatever injustices police in other cities may have committed, the shooting of the Dallas policemen was an egregious crime that will likely set back any reasonable discussions on these matters for a long time. Violent responses only encourage more injustice and more violence. Absolutely no one is helped by this act of declared vengeance by the assailant, a man who does not deserve to be named.
In the midst of all of this, how should we respond? Something tells me that the first step is to stop and really listen to one another.
Not a Spokesman – Although I have pastored in and been immersed in the African-American community for many years, I often humorously note, “I’ve been white all my life.” I cannot begin to know the depths of what it feels like to be African-American in a country with a history like ours. I am not, and cannot be, a spokesman for the black community. And thus I resist answering those who ask me what my parishioners think. My response can only be inadequate.
But I can say that I have learned to listen and simply to accept the experiences of others, experiences that often surprise me because I’d like to think we’ve made more progress than what I hear. My parishioners are people whom I trust and I will not doubt their experiences just because they aren’t mine, or because I think America isn’t or shouldn’t be like that. Our parishioners have varied backgrounds. Many are college-educated. Some are government employees; some own their own businesses. Some work in healthcare: doctors, nurses, or nursing home staff. Others are teachers, lawyers, or work on Capitol Hill. Still others have IT-related jobs, work in retail, or are involved in real estate. Although some of our parishioners are poor, overall my parish is an upper-middle-class African-American parish. With 600 in attendance (120 of whom are children), the offertory alone is almost a million dollars per year; other donations amount to another 200,000. We are not a poor, black, inner-city parish by any definition.
Despite this, most of my parishioners (many of whom earn six figures) can attest to the ongoing frustration of “driving while black,” “shopping while black,” and “hailing a taxi while black.” A man in my parish who is nearly sixty and a professional with a job on K Street, rejoices that Uber has arrived; prior to that it was very difficult for him to get a cab. He once filmed his attempts. Empty taxi after empty taxi drove right past him only to stop further up the block to pick up another patron, usually white and/or female.
Stories like this shock me. I think to myself that this can’t possibly still be going on in America. But these are people I trust and have lived with for a long, long time; they are not fired-up activists looking for trouble. They are talking about experiences that are realities for them. I once took a walk with an African-American deacon from a nearby Catholic parish. He was wearing trousers and a button-down shirt—ordinary, “respectable” clothing. We stepped into a store and he said to me, “Now watch. I am the ‘face of crime.’ We’re going to get extra scrutiny.” Dubious, I kept a little distance from him so that I could observe. Sure enough, that extra scrutiny was subtle but undeniably there.
Many African-Americans have also experienced problems with their treatment by the police. This is not to say that every interaction with law enforcement is bad every time. But it is common enough that many African-Americans do not have the same level of trust in the police that white Americans do. The widespread anger in the black community is not artificially created by activists or by the media; even if they at times light the fuse, the powder keg comes from past experiences and from events that are still happening today.
This may not be your experience or mine. We tend to doubt the experiences of others, especially when they are different from ours. But the point is that these are the experiences of many, if not most, African-Americans.
The first step in listening is to accept the stated experiences of many African-Americans without discounting or doubting them, to respectfully acknowledge them. A respectful reply could be as simple as saying, “I’m sorry that this has happened to you in the past and still continues in our country. Thank you for telling me so that I can better understand.”
White Americans also have experiences with race that are painful. In fact, one of the greatest difficulties in this time of political correctness is that many of the feelings and experiences of white Americans are excoriated and/or disallowed. In some sense they are not even allowed to express them at all without being shamed or sidelined.
There is much dismay and fear among many white Americans at the soaring rate of crime in poor neighborhoods, the high rate of black-on-black crime, and the further breakdown of African-American families. There is also a frustration when, despite the emergence of a strong black middle-class in many regions and the election (and reelection) of an African-American president, many activists minimize progress and still label the United States a racist country.
Most white Americans do not simply lay this at the feet of the African-American community. The causes are also seen as rooted in a poorly designed, patronizing welfare system that has undermined poor families, isolated them in housing projects and inferior schools, and locked many into a suffocating cycle of intergenerational poverty.
But again, publicly expressing such thoughts, fears, or experiences is extremely difficult in today’s politically correct culture. And thus resentments simmer and honest conversations about mutual solutions seem impossible.
The terrible, radical act of an isolated gunman has surely not helped the advancement of honest, respectful, candid discussion of our various experiences. But I remain convinced that such conversation is essential. We ought not to doubt or excoriate the experiences of others.
Some will say, “What good will listening do? It’s just a bunch of talk.” Perhaps, but if real listening can take place, maybe better understanding and mutual respect will pave the way to better, more mutually satisfactory solutions. I know it’s big and idealistic, but I think there’s is a place for big and idealistic—even in this cynical, decaying culture of ours.
I’m no policy wonk; I’m just a white guy who has loved and ministered to God’s people in largely African-American parishes for a long and wonderful time. There’s something about this long conversation over the years that has fostered mutual respect, love, and understanding. Believe it or not, we actually talk about things other than race! We talk about God and about the stuff of life: family, the death of loved ones, the latest movie, football, the weather, and how bad traffic is getting. People are people.
After all these years I can say to my parishioners, most of whom are African-American, “For you, I am your pastor. With you, I am your brother. From you, I am your son.”
Life lived together can do that. Race gives way to relationships, fears to familial feelings, concerns to commonality, and different experiences to delightful enrichment. It’s a long conversation that isn’t over yet, but that already blesses us.
Thank you, Lord. Help us to listen.
Great article.
Monsignor Pope Ping!
Yet every time she opens her mouth like she did right after the Dallas incident, her negivtives go up!
Excellent article.
Each person’s honest account of why he feels the way he does is worth a hearing. However, as Msgr. Pope observed yesterday, Christ both asks us and empowers us to move beyond our natures and our own experiences in order to build His Kingdom.
Those were unpopular concepts - “fighting words,” in fact - in the environment in which Jesus lived and taught, and it’s the same now.
Msgr. Pope would do well to keep in mind that even the Revrund Jackson admits to relief when he realizes that the footsteps he hears behind them are made by Whites rather than Blacks.
“Each person’s honest account of why he feels the way he does is worth a hearing.”
You can’t know that until you hear it, because some people’s reasons for feeling the way they do are ignorance, error, and satanic evil.
BLM, for instance.
“This past week began with the death of two African-American men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, in interactions with the police. Their deaths are certainly tragic and appear prima facie to be unnecessary, even possibly criminal.”
Almost every news story describes the shooting of the unarmed man in Baton Rouge and MN.
It would help ease tensions if the news media would point out in every story that the guy in BR had 19 events on his rap sheet, had a gun hidden in his clothes which would have sent him to prison and they guy in MN was a Crip, had a gun hidden in his clothes and was a suspect in an armed robbery.
Both were career criminals.
(Plagiarized)
Pope off the mark again.Obama is to blame and the media.
The choice is either to listen even to to people like that, or to prejudge a whole swath of people as irredeemable. The later is not, in my opinion, an option for Christians, any more than, for example, writing off the entire prison population.
If we are to “seek peace and pursue it,” as Scripture directs, we have to start somewhere.
“The choice is either to listen even to people like that, or to prejudge a whole swath of people as irredeemable.”
Prejudge, or observe? It’s not like they’re hiding anything. I personally believe BLM and NBP people are irredeemable, short of divine intervention, but that is irrelevant.
What does matter is this: I do not believe that God expects us to let them kill us just because they might find the road to redemption somewhere in the distant future.
“The latter is not, in my opinion, an option for Christians, any more than, for example, writing off the entire prison population.”
Lumping in the innocent with the guilty is, of course, not acceptable. However, lumping in the guilty with the guilty certainly is. The constitution forbids ex post facto laws, so prisoners who commit no further crimes cannot be further punished. However, neither the constitution nor Christian morality forbid the legally constituted authorities to break up riots with Browning .50 caliber machine guns, nor to pass laws calling for the death penalty for more crimes.
We have spent so many decades wrongfully failing to execute criminals for depredations that were or should have been capital crimes, instead allowing them to run post-doctoral seminars in crime and racial hatred in our prisons, that we are virtually overrun by murdering criminals who will kill again and again for as long as they draw the breath of life.
“If we are to “seek peace and pursue it,” as Scripture directs, we have to start somewhere.”
If we are to seek peace we must know what it is. In this world, peace is nothing more than the interval between the last time we defeated evil and the next time it attacks. And it will attack again, and again, and again, until Our Lord returns in glory. Evil always attacks Good; that is its nature.
N.B., the only way to create such an interval is to defeat evil once more, almost certainly by force of arms.
Satan is currently attacking on five major fronts: one is Nation of Islam, BLM, and NBP. The others are pigdog murder-muzzies, the Invasion of the Border Crashers, sodomite activism, and leftism in all its guises. When these servants of Satan riot in pursuit of their goals, the government should respond with live ammunition—lots and lots of it.
The innocent will not be rioting, and so will not be harmed.
It is time that people of too much good will wake up and smell the evil. The scum named above are quite willing to kill us to achieve their evil ends, and they will not stop while they live. If you have a calling to martyrdom, I certainly won’t stand in your way, but neither do you have a right to tell others that they must join you.
Like it or not, we must fight and win, or face a white American holocaust that will make the paperhanger look like an amateur.
“is not artificially created by activists or by the media; even if they at times light the fuse, the powder keg comes from past experiences and from events that are still happening today.”
For no reason other than racism?
If I were to go about dressed as an outlaw biker the cops would treat me differently.
Oh, but blacks can’t change their skin color, so it’s different, right?
Different, but not totally unrelated.
Blacks such as you describe, who are law-abiding, are penalized for the actions of criminal blacks. In a perfect world they wouldn’t be, but some of us seem to be less than perfect.
It’s a fact that a huge number of blacks are criminals. A cab driver with a well-developed sense of self-preservation plays the odds. It is much less likely that the white man in a suit is a criminal. How is a cab driver supposed to know whether any given black man is a deacon or a bandit?
If decent, law-abiding blacks are upset that they are not trusted, they should be angry with the black criminals who make it so difficult to trust black strangers.
Poking around the web I found wide discrepancies among reported statistics. These comport best with my prior knowledge:
Despite making up just 13% of the population, blacks commit around half of homicides in the United States. DOJ statistics show that between 1980 and 2008, blacks committed 52% of homicides, compared to 45% of homicides committed by whites.
In 2013, black criminals carried out 38% of murders, compared to 31.1% for whites, again despite the fact that there are five times more white people in the U.S.
From 2011 to 2013, 38.5 per cent of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were black. This figure is three times higher than the 13% black population figure. When you account for the fact that black males aged 15-34, who account for around 3% of the population, are responsible for the vast majority of these crimes, the figures are even more staggering.
“The first step in listening is to accept the stated experiences of many African-Americans without discounting or doubting them”
Like the rape of the black girl by the Duke lacrosse team? Or the racist graffiti that turns out to have been committed by a black? I’ve been around long enough to know that if you walk around with a sour heart looking for racism, you will find it. Whether it is present or not, you will find it. I don’t know what percentage of these experiences are real, but it is nowhere near 100%.
“one of the greatest difficulties in this time of political correctness is that many of the feelings and experiences of white Americans are excoriated and/or disallowed. In some sense they are not even allowed to express them at all without being shamed or sidelined.”
Thank you for that. I hope it doesn’t get you into trouble.
“Most white Americans do not simply lay this at the feet of the African-American community.”
Are a black college graduate pulling down $200k and a discarded crack baby really members of the same community in *any* meaningful way, other than race? And if there is a black community that disregards all considerations other than race, excludes whites, and has no interest in joining the greater community of Americans, how is this problem to be solved?
“And thus resentments simmer and honest conversations about mutual solutions seem impossible.”
There is a huge amount of good will among whites, a genuine longing for a solution. Why does it come to nothing?
No American black now living has ever been a slave, nor ever will be. Still, it might be illuminating to ponder the old saw, “Slaves dream not of freedom, but of becoming masters.”
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